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70 travel news December 2012/January 2013
December 2012/January 2013 travel news 71
The same conclusion was first reached by Trzebinski in her book, The Life and Death of
Lord Erroll in 2000. It was the two articles combined with an impending re-examination
into the murder by visiting journalist, Adam Edwards of London’s Sunday Times, that
prompted me to look again at the various takes on the mystery and to have a series
of telephone conversations with Juanita Carberry, the last surviving member of Happy
Valley. Juanita, now in her mid-80s, comes across as a friendly and sprightly lady living
quietly in London who, despite failing eyesight, keeps up with ongoing developments
in the Lord Erroll saga. Her semi-autobiography, Child of Happy Valley, has been re-
issued in paperback and I am very pleased to have been given an autographed copy.
For the uninitiated (and the forgetful) this is how it all began. At around 3.30 am on the
morning on 24th January 1941 in the Nairobi suburb of Karen, the body of a white man
in military uniform was found slumped in the passenger foot well of a rented Buick car
by two dairy workers. The location was close to the junction of the Ngong and Karen
roads, still a major intersection to this day. The car, with headlights ablaze, was in
danger of tipping into a murram pit and at first sight it appeared to have been involved
in a traffic accident. When Assistant Inspector Frederick ‘Alf’ Smith, followed shortly by
Chief Inspector Herbert Lanham, arrived on the scene they soon established that the
man had been the victim of a gunshot wound.
Although two pistol shots had been fired, he had been shot only once close to the left
ear, killing him instantly. Later in the day, a spent 0.32 calibre bullet was found lodged
inside the car. The victim was quickly identified as Kenya socialite and doyen of the
Muthaiga Country Club, the 22nd Earl of Erroll, known to his friends and acquaintances
as Josslyn Hay, ‘Joss’ for short.
In his book, White Roots in Africa published in 1997, Smith recounts the events that
followed. He had been born and raised in Kenya with the result that he, alone among the
police officers on the scene, spoke fluent Swahili. As soon as the identity of the victim
had been established, Smith put two and two together and assumed that Erroll had
started his fateful journey from the nearby home of Sir Delves (Jock) and Lady Diana
Broughton, a reasonable assumption given that Joss and Diana had been conducting
a very public affair. Smith then drove himself to the house in Marula Lane, some three
kilometres distant, where he took a statement, verified with a thumb print, from the night
watchman.
The watchman told Smith that he had seen Broughton climb into the back of Erroll’s car
and hide on the floor shortly before it had been driven away at around 3.00 a.m. He had
not seen Broughton return during the night hours but had seen him depart shortly after
sunrise as had Lady Diana and June Carberry, a family friend and Juanita’s step-mother,
all in separate vehicles. Later, when Inspector Arthur Poppy, who had been placed
in charge of the investigation but who spoke no Swahili, attempted to take another
statement from the watchman (who spoke no English) he declined and clammed up.
Other police officers who arrived at the house fared no better. Smith was not asked to
assist in the investigation and was so heavily cross-examined by Broughton’s counsel
during the subsequent trial, that his important evidence was not taken into account. An
inquest held on Monday, January 27th, the day after the burial, maintained the fiction
that Erroll had died as a result of an ‘accident’.
The murder, the most famous in Kenya’s colonial history, has been debated endlessly
ever since and been the subject of several books, articles, a BBC TV drama titled The
Happy Valley and at least one movie spin-off, primarily because no one has ever been
convicted of the crime. All this is ‘old hat’ but an account in a British newspaper that
claimed to throw new light on the murder, the Rune and Tzrebinski articles, together
with other bits and bobs of information, persuaded me to re-open the file, but first I will
refresh you about the Earl’s history and how he came to be in Kenya.
Josslyn Victor Hay was born in London on 11th May 1901, just before the end of the
Victorian era, the first son and heir of aristocratic parents, Lord and Lady Kilmarnock,
who one day would inherit the title of the 22nd Earl of Erroll. Joss and his younger
brother and sister, Gilbert and Rosemary, led a pampered childhood in Europe where
their father held positions at the British legations in Brussels, Vienna and Berlin, but
particularly at the family estate called ‘Slains’ in Scotland. An early photograph of Joss,
aged two, shows him dressed in girl’s clothes, a not uncommon practice for the time
apparently, but this appears to have had no effect on his sexual orientation because, as
we shall see, he was decidedly heterosexual throughout a life devoted to the pursuit of
women.